A group of protesters are about to experience the process being the punishment in Minnesota:
Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen announced an eight-count felony indictment against 15 anti-ICE protesters Tuesday, centered on a broad “antifa”-inflected conspiracy.
During a Tuesday press conference, Rosen would not say whether any federal officers were actually harmed, despite one of the counts being conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer and two of the counts being assault on a federal officer.
“Whether or not they actually at the end of the day caused bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious federal crime,” Rosen said.
Marci Wheeler points out that, at most, the damage inflicted was some dents in ICE vehicles.
The Broadview case involved some really terrible prosecutorial misconduct, including removing grand jurors who didn’t believe the fairy tales they were told, “vouching” — where a prosecutor says “just trust me” instead of presenting evidence — and misconduct that went as high as the US Attorney. There’s no reason to think that this case doesn’t include a heaping helping of the same thing.
Calling every instance were a group of people band together to push back on ICE goons a “conspiracy” is just more authoritarianism — these people have a First Amendment right to protest, and of course they’re going to band together when their freedoms and those of their neighbors are at stake.
The prosecutors involved in these cases need to face some consequences, but the legal establishment isn’t up to the challenge. Here’s a case where a prosecutor from Trump’s first term doctored some video to make her case. She got a 6 month suspension 8 years after her misconduct. That’s just not going to cut it:
